88

CHAPTER VI

“HIGH AND DRY”

The counsel to don a garb smacking less of the recent East struck me as sound; for although I was not the only person here in Eastern guise, nevertheless about the majority of the populace there was an easy aggressiveness that my appearance evidently lacked.

So I must hurry ere the shops closed.

“I beg your pardon. What time do the stores close, can you tell me?” I asked of the nearest bystander.

He surveyed me.

“Close? Hell!” he said. “They don’t close for even a dog fight, pardner. Business runs twenty-five hours every day, seven days the week, in these diggin’s.”

“And where will I find a haberdashery?”

“A what? Talk English. What you want?”